This invention relates to the documentation of aircraft and more particularly to a method and a device for accessing the documentation and performance of an aircraft according to alarms generated therein.
For making a flight, the crew of an aircraft has documents carried along on board the aircraft or directly available inside same. This type of documents comprises in particular the technical documentation of the aircraft, that is to say the description of the systems and the procedures, the tolerances, the list of minimum equipment items or MEL (acronym for Minimum Equipment List in English terminology) and the list of configuration deviations or CDL (abbreviation for Configuration Deviation List in English terminology), the company operational documentation (criteria for choice of an airport for diverting, crew work rules, etc.), performances (take-off, landing and in flight) as well as navigation and airfield charts.
It is observed here that aircraft performances are provided, for certain families of aircraft, in the FCOM (acronym for Flight Crew Operating Manual in English terminology) Vol. 2/3, in the QRH (acronym for Quick Reference Handbook in English terminology) or in specific documents such as take-off restrictions sheets.
Moreover, the pilot uses documents specific to each flight such as the flight record comprising, in particular, the flight plan and the weather charts for the route.
Hereinafter, it is considered that the operational documentation relates to all the documentation available on board an aircraft and connected with same, in particular the FCOM and the MEL as well as that connected with the company operating this aircraft and that necessary for calculation of performances of the aircraft in take-off and landing.
The operational documentation may be in a paper or electronic format. When it is in an electronic format, it may in particular be accommodated on a special data-processing platform incorporated into the aircraft but forming part of a domain referred to as open to which the company has access freely and which it may modify, unlike the avionic domain in which each modification generally is subject to the approval of the manufacturer of the aircraft.
Furthermore, each aircraft is equipped with an alarm system called FWS (abbreviation for Flight Warning System in English terminology) capable of detecting failures or abnormal configurations in order to warn the crew by virtue of the generation of visual and/or acoustic warnings and the display of procedures to be carried out and the state of the aircraft (list of inoperative systems, performance limitations, etc.) via a warning display system.
Such an alarm system forms part of the avionics of the aircraft.
When the FWS detects the failure of a system, the procedure that the pilot is to follow then is displayed on a screen. After the detection of this failure, the copilot, called Pilot Non-Flying, performs the required actions displayed on this screen.
When all the required actions have been performed and, therefore, the procedure no longer is displayed, the pilot then may consult his operational documentation, if time permits. This consultation generally is optional. It provides the pilot with additional information items regarding the impact of the failure. In this way, he has all the information items necessary for analyzing the situation and making the best possible decision concerning continuation of the mission and/or preparation for a following flight.
For these purposes, several manuals may be consulted. The order of consultation depends on the situation of the aircraft. Thus, generally and by way of illustration, if the aircraft is on the taxiway en route for the take-off, the MEL is to be consulted first. The pilot then may consult the FCOM.
Paper operational documentation requires the pilots to have a good knowledge of the structure of the manuals in order to rapidly access the sought information. When the page associated with the failure has been identified according to the structure of the manual in which the information is sought, the pilot consults the detailed information items relating to the procedure that he has just followed on the screen.
If it is deemed that the failure will not be repaired during the next stopover, the pilot may consult the MEL in order to evaluate the impact of the failure on the next mission. Through the various pages of this manual, the pilot may determine the flight conditions for the next mission as well as the various special operational procedures that he is to follow. In other words, consulting the MEL enables him to determine whether the current state of the aircraft is compatible with the next mission.
Furthermore, if the failure of the system affects the performances of the aircraft on landing, the pilot must find the information items necessary for calculation of the impact of the failure. These generally are available in the QRH.
If the failure affects the take-off, it is the MEL that will provide this indication.
FIG. 1 schematically illustrates an exemplary environment, in an aircraft, where the warnings are managed and where the corresponding documentation may be accessed. This system here comprises three separate parts: avionic environment 100, data-processing environment referred to as open 105 and environment 110 of documentation available in a paper format.
As indicated above, avionics 100 comprises in particular an FWS 115 for detecting failures or anomalies as well as a warning display system 120 for displaying the procedures to be performed when alarms are generated as well as the state of the aircraft.
The data-processing environment referred to as open 105 comprises an open on-board information system 130 to which there is connected a database 125 in which the operational documentation, or a part thereof, is stored. The open on-board information system makes it possible to consult the electronic documentation stored on aboard the aircraft, for example with the aid of key words. Although these documents generally are structured in hierarchic form, from thousands of documentary units, it is not necessary, here (with the aid of key words), to know the structure of the document in which information items are sought.
Finally, environment 110 of documentation available in a paper format comprises manuals 135 such as the FCOM, the MEL and the CDL.
If the pilot uses the paper format, he must know the source of the information that he is seeking in the multiple documentations that he has available to him on board the aircraft. The first action that the pilot must perform is therefore to select the operational manual in which to go and look for the information. When he thinks he knows in which document to look for his information, he must know the structure of the manual in order to go to the information as quickly as possible. It therefore is necessary for the pilot to have a good knowledge of his operational documentation.
Furthermore, the search for pertinent information in all the operational documentation is a tedious and lengthy task for the pilot and, therefore, reduces his resourcefulness. It is observed that, furthermore, it may be necessary to combine information items originating from several manuals in order to determine the operational impacts of an alarm, particularly in the case of performance calculation.
Finally, it is observed that the pilot's task increases when several alarms are generated simultaneously, each having to be processed one after the other but possibly having additional operational impacts when they are combined with each other.
The use of a documentation in electronic format with the aid of key words allows the pilot to free himself from knowledge of the documentary structure and the use of performance diagrams in order to take the impact of a failure into account, because search means, in particular by key words, or the direct selection of a failure facilitate access to the information.
Nonetheless, the pilot always must identify each failure detected, and an oversight on his part may contribute to a faulty assessment of the impacts of the failure on the aircraft, in particular on the performances at take-off and landing.